Back in November, my roommate MJ dropped a couple bombs on me... she called me from the living room and asked me to come out there as her boyfriend Robert had something to tell me... Whaaaaa? So I get out there and he told me that he asked MJ to marry him and she said yes. ???!!! Rock on brother! Congratulations! I went into the kitchen and took out some shot glasses and reached for a bottle of Jagermeister. I started to pour three drinks to have a cheers with them with when they dropped the next bomb: they were expecting! I put the third shot glass away and poured a glass of juice for MJ instead, now that alcohol was out of the question for the next nine months. That brought up some questions about living arrangements, but as I found out last weekend, that was almost the same thing that happened with Robert's brother. That's another post, once I get some photos from last weekend.

I weighed my options and as much as I liked living close to town and right on the beach, it just wasn't financially practical. Add to that the we all had our fingers crossed that Johnny Rotten was coming back to get Happyfish Divers off the ground and would need a roommate, I decided to look around for a more affordable apartment. I looked in the paper that Friday and there were pages and pages of ads in the Caymanian Compass for residential rentals. Most of them were greedy money-grubbing landlords looking to bilk some company for "executive rentals" for a second-rate apartment, but there were a few reasonable ones.

Ultimately, and at the last minute, I found an apartment back in West Bay that was within our budget and a nice place. I looked at a few places in our price range and they were dumps. Compared to the Rockstar Palace on the beach that I had been in for the last year, anyway. It was kind of depressing and I was starting to resign myself to the level of apartment we were going to be able to afford.

On a whim, after looking at the last chicken coop in Mt Pleasant, I turned left and popped in to Century 21's offices in the Galleria. I had planned to stay away from there, as my friends George & Darlene rented an apartment through one of their property managers there. Her name was Amber Yates and they had nothing good to say about the experience. She always seemed to be too busy pretending she was the star in Sex and the City to deal with tenant problems. George is a pretty easy going guy, but he used to get this pulsating vein in his neck everytime her name came up. That was enough for me to stay away from them, but time was running out for finding a place, it was January 28th.

I looked at their listings outside on the window and there was one listing for a duplex in West Bay, out behind The Ranch for $1700. I went inside and found out unfortunately that that one was taken already. I saw down with another agent there named Sam and we went through "the book". There was one there for $1800, out in West Bay so we decided to go take a look.

We opened the door and it smelled a little stale. I guess it had been vacant for a month or two. It was a two bedroom, two-and-a-half bathroom fully furnished apartment. Wow. From the minute we walked in I knew that this was the place. Leather couch & loveseat that was comfy, the two bedrooms each had their own full bathrooms and there was a powder room downstairs as well. The TV is a lame 19" CRT, but hey whatevs... as soon as the Sharp Aquos 32" LCD HDTV drops below the $799 barrier, it's all mine :) The Rockstar Palace had Location Location Location and was decorated very well, but it really wasn't set up for living in for longer than a week at a time, and the landlady couldn't get her head around the difference between a short-term rental and a long-term rental. This is probably the nicest apartment I've lived in since I moved to Grand Cayman back in 1998.

That kicked off a whirlwind of negotiations and running around, all while running around in the implementation phase of a huge new software application at work. I moved all my stuff out here the night of the 31st before the power was cut on so I had to stack everything in the living room and stay back at the old apartment on the couch. That however, is another post.

SO here we are, a month later, living right around the corner from Hell and I couldn't be happier.